Many dog owners think their own pet is smart, but get ready to meet an energetic and truly intelligent border collie, Chaser. Pilley (psychology, emeritus, Wofford Coll.) shares a remarkable story of his family dog, who over a period of three years learned to recognize and fetch more than 1,000 objects by name and eventually was even taught the meaning of different types of words such as verbs and prepositions. Pilley conducted other experiments and concluded that Chaser has two cognitive abilities: memory storage and working memory. Pilley’s findings were published in a scholarly journal, and Chaser has appeared on the Today Show and CBS Evening News and was featured in a NOVA Science Now episode on animal intelligence along with Alex, Irene Pepperberg’s fascinating parrot. While the author focuses on Chaser’s intelligence, he writes charmingly about fun, loyalty, and the friendship that an older man and his companion dog share. VERDICT Along with Pepperberg’s Alex & Me, Chaser’s remarkable story adds to our evolving understanding of how animals learn and is recommended for dog and animal intelligence collections.—Eva ­Lautemann, formerly with Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston

Ogle (Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer) provides an unflinching look at the history of American meat industries: beef, pork, and poultry. She deftly details the peculiar struggles that led to an embrace of industrialization—changes that were seen as near miracles of science and production, designed to make food labor safer, more efficient, and better able to feed the nation. In particular, the combined forces of two world wars and the rise in the number of factories led thousands to seek their fortunes in cities, depriving farms of much needed workers. Factorylike farming solved the labor shortage, but farmers experienced the paradox of plenty: squeezed by too much supply, they were unable to sell at prices high enough to pay their own bills. Ogle generally keeps her opinions to a minimum and reserves her harshest criticism for the American public, whom she believes to be an entitled bunch that has spent the last century demanding that the paradox of plenty always be rigged in their favor. VERDICT In this work, which compares with Roger Horowitz’s Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation, Ogle expertly examines and illuminates the complex history of food, farming, politics, consumption, and the growth of a nation. Her fluid prose will appeal to skeptical readers who enjoy their history without an excess of preaching.—Rosemarie Lewis, Georgetown Cty. Lib., SC

Despite bans on commercial trade in ivory and rhinoceros horn, despite laws and penalties against poaching and smuggling, and despite international treaties (such as the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species) designed to protect endangered species, the poaching of elephants and rhinos in Africa is at an all-time high, in large part owing to continued demand coming from East Asia. Approximately 25,000 elephants were killed for ivory in 2011. Orenstein (Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins), a wildlife conservationist, tells an appalling story of how persistent greed for ivory and rhino horn has drastically reduced African elephant and rhino populations. Crime syndicates meet the unrelenting demand by using heavily armed poaching gangs to raid Africa’s wildlife preserves and national parks. Orenstein brings his considerable expertise to bear on this complex catastrophe, presenting all sides of some of the most polarizing issues debated today, such as legalizing the ivory trade. VERDICT This book, on a tragedy that demands worldwide attention and informed consumers, is recommended for all wildlife conservation collections as a companion to John F. Walker’s Ivory’s Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants.—­Cynthia Lee Knight, Hunterdon Cty. Lib., Flemington, NJ

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